Share this:

FIVE GO-OLD RIIIII…

Right now though, begun, this list of our most favoured games of 2013 has. As always, it’s no particular order until it’s clearly in a particular order. These doors will become active day-by-day throughout December, with a fine collection of typed thoughts, sometimes calm and sometimes frenzied, awaiting you as reward for clicking upon each of them.

In case you were worried, you own favourite game of the year is in here, and right at the very top of the list too, but an unavoidable HTML mishap that has as yet defeated the finest minds in the known world means it’s written in a tiny, colourless font and thus may appear to be to all intents and purposes invisible. What a shame.

I’ve played so many side scrollers since the 80s I’m absolutely sick of them. There’s only so many things you can do with them. I’ve bought a couple modern ones including Ninja, and I never got past an hour of play on any of them. Although, Ninja was close for me, having the possibility of stealth, which I do enjoy. I’ve seen the video of the game, but never could get past it, either. Maybe it’s just that I’m burned out on adventure games. Played too many of those, also, and only half enjoyed most of them.

KRZ cannot be judged until all 5 parts are out, they haven’t even put out part 3 yet. Trust me, I’ve read books and everything, and opinions on what is good or bad can be changed right at the end. I thought GTAV was good for the first 6 hours. I now think it’s the worst GTA yet, having seen it all.

My personal GOTY isn’t on compupers, but as regards the AAA PC space, I did quite enjoy Bioshock Infinite. Assassin’s Creed IV, while I’ve only just started, has begun reparations for the atrocity that was ACIII.

For me it has been Saints Row IV. It wasn’t perfect, but all of my gripes are forgotten when I’m hovering overhead in a shiny Void, raining destruction down on my co-op part- the enemy, I mean. The enemy.

I’m guessing Gone Home, Brave New World, SRIV, or Infinite will take the Horace Eve Cup. Maybe Enemy Within, but it was probably released too late.

Mine personally would be be Gone Home, followed at a distance by Don’t Starve, Fez, and the Dishonoured expansions. And I think it’d be great to see either Candy Box or A Dark Room in the calendar. They’re browser games, but they did more interesting things than 90% of games released on Steam.

But as long as it’s not Booker DeWitt’s Turgid Nonsense Bullet Opera on the 24th I’ll be happy.

My favourite game of the year is one I’m honestly NOT expecting to feature, or at least not for the reasons I like it. Blacklist is this year’s greatest Hotline Miami-like when set up properly, yes it’s a poe faced freedom eagle on single player or coop, yes it’s a brilliant asymmetric hide ‘n’ seek ‘em up in the spies vs mercenaries mode, but play one of the optional sandbox levels on the hardest difficulty and you invent a rapid brutal and oddly creative, high score chasing, rhythmic murder/knock out/ghost-athon.

SC: Blacklist could make it onto the calendar. Sure it could, it’s the best SC since Chaos Theory and RPS gave it a good review (much to the chagrin of the comment section which oh so wanted to have their pre-existing negative bias confirmed).

So you only get to enjoy stories if you’re wealthy enough to consume them as soon as they come out or shortly after? If you were born after things were created it’s your own fault and you should have them ruined? Come on, that falls apart quicker than Infinite’s plot.

To respond to your snark, the converse of your argument is that the entire world must never talk about a game except in closed, private forums of pre-screened members on the off-chance that someone, somewhere might accidentally have an experience ‘spoiled’.

Furthermore, the results of the SuperBowl must never be covered in the nightly news in case someone hasn’t yet had a chance to watch the replay.

Presumably a game review can’t even explain why a crap game is crap because, heaven forbid, we wouldn’t want to ‘spoil’ it for some random person, somewhere.

Hmm, but those stories were given to them to read, normally we choose what we like, and what we are happy to have spoiled for us or not. Instead they should have given people the option of things to invest in, and then done the spoiler test, so that it represents actual media consumption.

I spent most of 2013 playing older games too. Digging out classics like Homeworld and discovering the RTS genre in general. Its been rather fun, that and the fact older games are super cheap especially in steam sales. Dropping £30-40 on a new release seems too much like masochism these days.

@ phil Congrats on the game, 12 years is a long time coming, must have felt quite special. I still have to complete Corporation, Robocop 3, Shadow of the Beast and Captive. All Amiga games from beard ago that I never got past early missions in

I bought the amazon boxed version. There are ini hacks and things you can do to get it in 1080p, if HD is an important point for you? But yes, the atmosphere in that game is amazing. One word – cryotrays :*(

I’m struggling to come up with titles that’ll even end up on this list. Wolf Among Us probably… Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider… very likely CiV: Brave New World and XCOM: Enemy Within… maybe Knock-Knock, Kentucky Route Zero, The Stanley Parable, Don’t Starve and Papers, Please… definitely Saint’s Row IV, the Hivemind loves those games… and that’s it. Only 11 titles. That wasn’t a spectacular year for gaming, to be honest, unlike the last two years. Frankly, Saint’s Row IV is the most likely to end up as the game of 2013,

I’m very much hoping Civ V: Brave New World makes the list, if not for the expansion content itself, then for the sum total of what Civ V has become to date. I understand why they didn’t put the game on their 2010 calendar when it was originally released, but it has become a much better game after 2 expansions and 3 years worth of patches. It would be a shame if it didn’t get any recognition at all for that.

And personally, I suspect GOTY is going to go to an indie game this year. The AAA field just isn’t as strong for 2013 as it’s been in previous years.

My personal Goatee? Spelunky. I know it’s been around for ages in some form or another, but this was the year I finally found it, and it’s still my biggest timesink. Also lots of other indie games. In fact, this year very few of the big AAA titles I’ve played have stayed with me once I finished them. Small, odd games are the future for me. Which is good because they’ve more interesting, cost less, and don’t need me to upgrade to fancy ultra-graphics machines to get them.

I love/hate Spelunky. It’s filled with brutality and temptation. You see treasure, but have to overcome some creatures and a trap, resulting in death. While the exit was just 1 more drop down. Or: Grab the golden statue after making sure you have an escape route, only noticing, as the boulder is rolling, it’s going to squish the damsel.

It’s just so damn easy to die, but when you die it’s entirely your own fault.

The fact that death is always just one misstep away makes the game for me. It males everything you do significant. When you complete the game (nearly 200 runs and only 4 completions!) or find and beat one of the hidden levels it’s so much more rewarding because you earned it. No restarting at a checkpoint 20 second ago.

I tried Spelunky recently and the control scheme annoys the crap out of me as does the automatic clinging to any ledge in reach. It makes just dropping down a single block wide gap nearly impossible, I’ve died several times because I couldn’t just drop through.

This year has been the year of first person walkers, as they called them; so, I’m expecting Amnesia and Shelter to be there, and I hope The Stanley Parable and Gone Home are serious contenders to GOTY. Saints Row is another possibility, but, I don’t know, it depends what they want to reward as GOTY, innovation in gameplay and/or storytelling, or just solid, if more traditional, fun. Papers Please, too.

Also, contrary to what seems to be the majority, I’ve liked 2013 more than 2012. I can’t remember a title from 2012 that I wanted at launch at all costs, to the point that I couldn’t wait for a discount, but I did get Shelter, TSP, Gone Home and Christine Love’s Hate Plus as soon as I could, and even though they were short I greatly enjoyed all 4 of them.

(Don’t hit me, but I haven’t bought nor played KRZ yet)

Edit: Also, this was the year of Fez and Bientot L’ete, and Monaco, and Antichamber; even if I haven’t enjoyed some of them as much as I was expecting, they’re all so innovative and refreshing, it would feel a bit off to have a more traditional AAA title take the GOTY.
But maybe I only say that because I don’t like most AAA titles.

I do enjoy some good gratifying gameplay (Xcom, Dark Souls, etc) but I really want Gone Home to win, or failing that, TSP. Bringing them to the spotlight would only give the signal that at least a good chunk of gamers want a bit more maturity and artistic value in their games and not just mindless fun.

The only thing that could kill gaming, on the other hand, is lack of variety. And it’s not like there’s a lack of brainless “pure gameplay” games.

This is something I’ve never understood about Nintendo, they release consoles with a handful of ok games on and then slowly drip feed us their core titles. Wouldn’t it be a far better strategy to wait until they have 2 or 3 core titles ready before launching their latest console? like a Mario ‘platformer’ or Mario Kart, a Zelda sequel or a Metroid game, and god forbid a Starfox or Fzero game. I thought ZombiU was bloody brilliant and one of the best zombie games i’ve ever played but I think I’m in the minority on that one.

I wouldn’t think of it, I just got the gold Zelda 3DS XL just so I could play A Link Between Worlds. I’d probably go with The Last of Us for GotY. I really enjoyed Crysis 3, Metro Last Light, Tomb Raider and Saints Row 4, but they just don’t stand out as much, The Stanley Parable is probably the only game I played on PC I’d is close to tLoU.

p.s. Tearaway is up there, but I still need to finish it.

edit: Argh, I forgot Guacamelee! I did (mostly) play it on my Vita though, so which would explain me not thinking of it for PC games.

The Stanley Parable, Papers Please and Gone Home would probably be very high up if it was up to me. I would think that Shadow Warrior, Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite will also do well (I haven’t played them yet, but I think they were generally well received?). And since I’ve really enjoyed Crusader King’s II, I expect Europa Universalis IV to be staking a good place, even if I’ll probably not buy it until next year.

Tomb Raider wasn’t that well received on RPS (But it’s a big name, so either it’s totally awful or it will always be somehow well received in the general public); I don’t think it will make the calendar, or at least I hope it won’t.
Bioshock Infinite had a weird reception. At first everyone was “wow” and then after a couple of weeks it was “now that I think about it, it’s not THAT good/it could have been better in a lot of ways”. It will probably make the calendar though. If anything,for the Burial at sea DLC.

I kinda figured they’d make the list since there weren’t a huge amount of big games released this year. I guess you might be right though, and we’ll mainly see indies and DLC/expansion packs (although the latter feels like cheating, but I suppose thinks like Burial At Sea are quite separate from the main game).

I guess I’ll be the one to break the silence (and become the first sellout) in mentioning the game that’s made the most headlines as being my personal GOTY: Ridicul–I mean Grand Theft Auto V. Yes yes, pooh pooh at my homogenized, mainstream taste, but it doesn’t stop GTAV from being the most fun game made by Rockstar in a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG ass while…since Bully, I reckon.

As for the PC-zone, my appendage keeps swinging back and forth between A Machine for Pigs (for never leaving my conscience since I’d finished it) and Enemy Within (for having dumped the most hours in any game/expansion/DLC this year).

I like Enemy Within a great deal, but it seems to have introduced a lot of bugs and instability to the game, at least for me. Or perhaps those things were always there, and the expansion somehow caused them to be expressed more often? At any rate, I did make it through the new campaign once and had a good time, but have spent an inordinate amount of time restarting, deleting caches, and verifying local files.

RPS Advent Calendar – yes! It’s that time of the year again. There’s something thrilling, beautiful, reassuring and rewarding in this ritual. Every day to read about a new entry and why it deserves it’s place and in the end – holiday. It’s win – win.

These games fascinate and scare me in equal measure. Bought both on steam when they were on offer, but just trying to crack the surface of WALB is something I am savouring and taking my time with. I’ve barely played it, but spent lots of time in the armoury learning, so that a skirmish isn’t just a load of intimidating acronyms storming down the screen at me and decimating all my lovely units.

Only way I can remember what a unit is is by looking up a youtube video of it. The STRF 90 video was particularly cool / scary and now I can’t forget that. Yeah. Once I know the units reasonably well, then its time to jump in to some AI skirmishes and maybe the campaign.

This is a problem, for the learning curve might be high. But that depends on the skill level of your opponent(s). Although, now is good time to jump into the game because of the “noob rush” provoked by the recent sales. As to how to best learn: I suggest you lurk around the official forum with its rather helpful geezers AND don’t be ashamed of getting stomped in the beginning. Also, find yourself an experienced pal to play with- make friends ;) !

Has the single player got any better? When I first played it there was a 20 min. time limit, which turned it into an ungodly rush, and meant the campaign degenerated into a series of dull deadlocks. I absolutely loved EE, so hoping they fixed it!

The 20 minutes is still in last I checked, you don’t lose morale/initiative for stalemates though anymore IIRC.

It’s not an oversight, it’s intentional, a fight between 2 fully powered battlegroups is supposed to take place over several turns. The 20 mins is there for both sides to seize territory and whittle away at each other until one can make a successful push.

But yeah, the game is still primarily about multiplayer, Red Dragon is supposed to have improved AI and generally improved campaign but I’m not counting on the singleplayer component.

You should try the multiplayer, its not nearly as difficult as the MP in games like Starcraft or CoH, you don’t need high APM or to rote-learn build orders.

Here here! It is mine as well. I played a month or two during the closed beta, but hopping back in at release it has sucked me in. Im over 200 hours played already on Steam. Almost all of that is weekends only.

Haven’t played many of the games everyone’s talking about: Papers Please, Bio:Inf, The Stanley Parable, Black Flag.

Shadowrun Returns would be an honorable mention if its user made campaigns had better writing.

I spent 2013 catching up on 2012 games (XCOM and DIshonored), much as I spent 2012 catching up on 2011 with The Witcher 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This works for me; it’s easy on the wallet and I get patched versions with all the DLC.

I liked shelter, proteus, tomb raider and sonic racing transformed the most of the new games I played this year. Shelter was emotional, proteus was magical and relaxing, tomb raider was flawed but overall the best action game this year, and sonic is one of the best kart racers I have ever played. I also liked knytt underground but I don’t know if that was this year or last year.

I know a lot of people will say brave new world, but I am still annoyed that it took three years and forty quids worth of expansions to get the game into the state it should have been on release day. I didn’t enjoy the devil may cry reboot, and I think as time passes I have grown to dislike both metro last light and bioshock infinite more and more.

The worst game I played this year is a psvita game called ninja gaiden sigma plus. In fact I would rank it as one of the worst games I have ever played, right up there with bubsy 3d, but bubsy has a better camera.

My GOTY from 2002 to 2012 was Morrowind, but I think there’s a ten year statute of limitations on those things so I suppose I’ll have to choose a new one.

I suspect I’m also in the distinct minority as I wasn’t that taken with Papers Please. While it’s unarguably interesting from a conceptual point of view, I found the actual gameplay monumentally tedious. This may, in fact, be the point, but it was enough of an issue for me that I became thoroughly disengaged from the setting.

I’m still playing older games and a bunch of time spent on flight sims (X-Plane, Rise of Flight) that are also too old to qualify. Not much has stood out for me this year in new titles, probably because I haven’t bought any of the better indie games.

The AAA titles I bought this year like Binfinite and Tomb Raider were disappointing. Metro: Last Light was okay, but the linear scripting made it a bit tedious at times. The best game I’ve played recently was the Dunwall DLC for Dishonored, but that may not count as a GOTY candidate since it’s DLC and borrows content from the main game. I hope it makes the calendar, though.

And then there was the biggest disappointment of all: Rome 2 Total War. I had hoped CA would be able to move a little faster with the patch progress so it would have a chance to be my personal GOTY this year. But it’s still looking we’re months away from knowing whether CA can fix the more glaring problems like siege AI and the political system, or whether it’s destined to be a terminally crippled game like Empire. Oh well.

This is just the games I’ve played this year, they weren’t necessarily released this year.

I finally got around to playing Skyrim, and for all it’s flaws I loved it, all 250hrs of it (mind you I wasn’t playing a melee class). Loved Bioshock Infinite too. Darksiders was very good. Just Cause 2 was enormous fun but had some flaws. I finally finished Batman Arkham Asylum, also great. Warhammer 40K Space Marine was….. mediocre and annoying. Shogun 2, very good. AVP decent. Spelunky was great, but never really got far into it. Don’t Starve was good for a while.

GOTY? Probably Bioshock Infinite just takes it over Skyrim. Bioshock’s gameplay was fun if not revolutionary, but there were so many great story moments.

Weirdly enough the style and feel of fun to that game, in my mind, closely resembles playing Realm of the Mad God for the first time; in that both games seemed intent on just force-feeding me hilarious levels of frantic, ridiculous fun just as fast as I could consume them.